Hugh Williams (historian)

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Hugh Williams (1843–1911) was a Welsh church historian, college tutor, and Presbyterian minister. He was born on 17 September 1843 at Porthaethwy, Anglesey, the son of Hugh Williams, a carrier and small freeholder, and his wife Jane. He grew up in Anglesey, studied there and in Bangor, and for a while worked as a mason while continuing his studies.

In 1864 he joined the Calvinistic Methodist College at Bala, where he later taught as a tutor (1867–1869). He earned a B.A. from London in 1870 (first in the second class in classics) and an M.A. from London in 1871 (second in philosophy). He ran a grammar school at Menai Bridge and ministered to Calvinistic Methodists in Anglesey, being ordained without charge in the Presbyterian Church of Wales in 1873.

He was appointed professor of Greek and mathematics at Bala in August 1873, and began his duties in 1874. During the 1874 vacation he visited Germany to study the language. When Bala College became purely theological in 1891, he became professor of church history. In 1903 he served as moderator of the North Wales assembly of the Presbyterian Church. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Glasgow University in 1904.

Williams faced laryngitis for a time. He preached every Sunday, though he was not considered a popular preacher, and he conducted a weekly Bible class. He was involved with the Theological Board and Court of the University of Wales and with the council of Bangor College.

He died after nearly two years of arterial disease on 11 May 1911 in Bala and was buried in Llanycil churchyard, Merionethshire. He had built a reputation with his edition of Gildas, with English translation and notes (part I, 1899; part II, 1901). His magazine articles and papers laid the groundwork for his major work, Christianity in Early Britain, published posthumously in 1912 by Clarendon Press. He also wrote other works, including Some Aspects of the Christian Church in Wales in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (1895) and The Four Disciples of Illtud (1897), and edited Lewis Edwards’s Holiadau Athrawiaethol (1897). He contributed to encyclopedias and journals as well.

In Welsh, he published further works and contributed to scholarly discussions. On 31 December 1884 he married Mary, eldest daughter of Urias Bromley of Old Hall, Chester; she survived him, and they had no children.